OLDIE BUT GOODIE – Carl Back, Elizabeth Liuzzi, and Jennifer Andrews are featured Arsenic and Old Lace at the Barnstable Comedy Club.

Credit the fine and funny cast

Lots and lots and lots of jokes about theater critics drive Arsenic and Old Lace. But I won’t hold it against the Barnstable Comedy Club that they are producing this funny old warhorse.

You walk into the club to see a meticulously fusty set by Spencer Hallett, Phil Colvin, Henry F. Morlock, Sheldon Stewart, Elizabeth and Marcus Liuzzi, Bobby Mangahas, and Neil Morris. There’s plenty of lace, some of which later gets changed to crimson brocade. Not very subtle, but by that point everyone is laughing too hard.

The plot is just silly. It involves slamming doors, someone who thinks he’s Theodore Roosevelt, corpses, eccentric maiden aunts, police, a mobster, a lunatic asylum, someone who actually wants to marry into this family, poisoned elderberry wine, and, did I mention, a theater critic.

One of the pleasures of community theater is that you get to see people in, literally, new roles. A pastor (Jonathan Ahnquist) makes a pretty good police lieutenant. A musician (Steven C. Koglin) passes pretty well for a pastor. It’s easy to imagine the real-life pastor lending a collar to the pretend one, and maybe the pretend clergyman offering the use of a fedora to the make-believe cop.

The problems with this enjoyable show are technical.

First, I don’t know what the copyright laws are, but the thing is just too long. A good editor could blue-pencil about half an hour out of it by cutting out several slamming doors, trumpet blasts, and lovers’ quarrels.

Second, the cast – which is well-chosen, and acts well – needs as a group to remember to project. They don’t use mechanical amplification, and this is good. But when you’re on stage, even though you may feel you’re too loud, you’re not. The couple behind me kept having to talk as one asked another, “What did he/she say?” – and they were only in the third row.

Third, a light shining through a window on stage left was nearly blinding at times to someone sitting down front.

All of that said, and the theater critic jokes noted, the cast of Barnstable Comedy Club’s Arsenic and Old Lace is fine and funny. I’m not really sure why the two sisters, Abby Brewster (Jennifer Andrews) and Martha Brewster (Elizabeth Liuzzi) have sort of English accents given that the play is set in Brooklyn, but their comedy is spot-on. And the meanie, played by Carl Back, and his flunkie (Dr. Einstein, but not that Dr. Einstein), played by Paul Beatty, are so deadpan that they’re wonderful.

As we left the Comedy Club after the show, many people were saying something like, “I haven’t had so much fun in a long time.” In fact, many were still laughing and repeating jokes.

Not one of them mentioned the minister jokes, or the theater critic jokes. If you want to know whether either of those happened to drink the poisoned wine, you’ll just have to go to this play yourself. Just understand that the sisters want you to know that “You don’t think we’d bury Mr. Hoskins without a full Methodist service.” And the drama critic grabs a piece of paper on his way out of the house because “I can save some time by writing my review on the way to the theatre.”

Arsenic and Old Lace will be performed on May 21, 22, 28, and 29 at 8 p.m. and May 23 and 30 at 2:30 p.m. Tickets are $16 ($14 for students and seniors 62 and over). The Comedy Club is at 3171 Route 6A in Barnstable Village and the phone number at the box office is 508-362-6333.